On this page:
Ordering Books at JSTOR
There are multiple ways to get books through JSTOR:
- You can purchase individual books (or collections of books) outright
- You can use a patron-driven acquisition model that we call Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA)
- You can participate in a different type of patron-driven model called Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA)
- You can subscribe to JSTOR’s Open Access books
Learn more and find title lists for all models at JSTOR's Ebook acquisition models.
In order to move forward with books purchases, you will need to complete the following:
- Pick-and-Mix is an outright purchase option that requires signing an Institutional Participation Agreement (IPA) with JSTOR. Until that agreement is on file, access won’t be provisioned. Another way to purchase pick-and-mix books is through Yankee Book Peddler (YBP) a.k.a. GOBI. In this case, we still need an IPA, but YBP will also send us a registration form. Both documents are required to provision access.
- For the Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) program, an IPA is also required, and libraries manage their DDA workflows either through GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO, or through ProQuest, part of Clarivate (Rialto and OASIS) library suppliers. Learn more about JSTOR's Demand Driven Acquisition program.
- For the Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA) program, an IPA is required as well as an EBA Addendum. This addendum sets out the conditions of the program and indicates how funds are to be used at various times of the year. For example, there is an upfront payment to start the program. Approximately one quarter of that payment will go toward access, while the rest is applied to book purchases at the end of the fiscal year. The payment amount is determined based on the institution’s projected eBook usage in the EBA program when reviewing the archive journal usage in the previous year.
- Open Access books don’t require any specific paperwork. However, if you wish to get MARC records for them, you'll need a free account with OCLC.
If you would like to purchase books, please contact participation@jstor.org.
Accessing your order
Once an order has been sent, access is provisioned. Please note that incomplete paperwork or the type of payment method (check, wire transfer, etc.) can cause delays in this process. Access can be provisioned in many ways including IP and remote access options.
Once access has been granted, the primary contact at your institution and any others designated by them will receive a welcome email from support@jstor.org. The email will outline how to access MARC records for the titles, instructions for accessing COUNTER usage statistics, and a link to sign up for a weekly or monthly non-COUNTER Books Usage report for your institution or consortium.
MARC record delivery
JSTOR works with OCLC to provide high-quality MARC records for titles available in the Books at JSTOR program. If you haven't already, you'll need to register with OCLC to get an OCLC account symbol via OCLC's Worldshare Collection Manager request form. Once you have your OCLC account symbol, send an email to support@jstor.org.
Once we add this information to your account, a report of your books title list will be sent every Friday with the JSTOR Holdings Feed. This feed is delivered directly to OCLC through a file transfer protocol (FTP). OCLC picks up those files on Sunday evening and begins processing.
The JSTOR Holdings feed includes global files that OCLC processes first. Once global files processing has been completed, feeds for all individual accounts associated with JSTOR are processed. This process can take up to three weeks depending upon how many extant records are in the feed and the number of records on any given account.
Once OCLC has received the first feed for your institution, it will automatically select the appropriate collections for you. Please do not manually select the All Purchased, Demand Driven Acquisition, or Evidence Based Acquisition Collections in Collection Manager. Manually selecting those collections will interrupt your ability to pull correct records for them. The Open Access collection can be manually selected or you can choose to wait for the system to automatically select it.
You can find a Quick Start Guide for Collection Manager on our MARC Records page. There are also translations for our most commonly used languages. This guide will explain how to set up delivery preferences and access your MARC records.
If you don't see the appropriate collections selected in Collection Manager within two weeks of receiving your Books at JSTOR welcome message, please contact support@jstor.org to confirm that we have the correct OCLC account symbol on file and to make sure your institution has been included in the weekly holdings feed. (Please include your file delivery settings in that email.)
MARC records for DDA participants
DDA participants have two options to receive MARC records for DDA titles:
- Receive MARC records from our partner library suppliers EBSCO (GOBI) or ProQuest (Rialto and OASIS), or
- Receive MARC records from OCLC’s WorldShare Collection Manager
Receiving usage reports
For institutions in any of our Books at JSTOR collections, you can pull non-COUNTER books usage reports on a monthly basis from the JSTOR Admin portal. This report will give you information about usage of titles in the various collections as well as purchase triggers. See Books at JSTOR Reports for more information.
For DDA participants, please note that weekly transaction reports or statements will be provided by either EBSCO (GOBI) or ProQuest (Rialto and OASIS) and not by JSTOR.